


Formal Proofs in Boolean Logic

by wizened_cynic



Category: Joan of Arcadia
Genre: Alternate Universe - Time Travel, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-04
Updated: 2012-12-04
Packaged: 2017-11-20 07:14:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,267
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/582704
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wizened_cynic/pseuds/wizened_cynic
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's one thing to tell your boyfriend that your mother's an alcoholic; it's something else to tell him that you involuntarily time travel. (Time Traveler's Wife AU)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Formal Proofs in Boolean Logic

**Author's Note:**

> Originally written on 7 September 2005. I was going through some of my old fic and realized this held up pretty well. The concept of time traveling in here is taken straight from Audrey Niffenegger's _The Time Traveler's Wife_ and according to the note I made when I first posted this in my journal, I couldn't think of a title, so I lifted a line out of my PHIL 220 syllabus.

****

**ONE  
** **Grace is 17, and 20.**

****

It's one thing to tell your boyfriend that your mother's an alcoholic; it's something else to tell him that you involuntarily time travel.

Grace knows that Luke's big on trust and not keeping all the important stuff secret, but she has a feeling if she told him about CDP, his head might explode. And she doesn't want to make his head explode unless it involves the biology closet and her tongue.

In the end, he finds out anyway (and his head doesn't explode either; guess that means she should start planning something for the biology closet). He finds out the night the synagogue burns down.

One minute Grace is in her dorm, typing up the last paragraph of her way-overdue history paper, and the next, she's sitting on the floor of the Girardi bathroom. She's sitting on the floor of the Girardi bathroom _naked_ , which is just fan-fucking-tastic, considering any one of the G's could walk in and she has no reasonable explanation for it.

There's a watch on the counter, Joan's watch, and Grace checks it for the date. April 22, 2005. Which puts her in high school, junior year. It's the night Ryan Hunter set --- and she remembers. Tonight's _the_ night.

Knowing that all the Girardis are sound asleep and possibly dreaming about koala bears in hats, Grace opens the door and steals her way up to Joan's room. She can hear her self snoring as she passes the den, which is weird, but not any weirder than the fact that she has had a boyfriend for five years (that's half a _decade_ ) and she still hasn't yet murdered him --- and most of the time, she doesn't even _want_ to.

Grace tiptoes past a sleep-babbling Joan and borrows a T-shirt and jeans and a scarf, the one in shades of brown which Joan will complain about missing in a couple of days. She pulls the covers over Joan as she leaves, and heads down toward the front door.

She has the door halfway open when she hears him call her name. She knows what will happen, since she has heard Luke's account of this several times, but it's unsettling and exciting just the same to actually live it.

"Grace?" Luke's voice is thick with sleep. He emerges from the shadows, glasses dangling from his left hand as he rubs his eyes with his right. He studies her for a longer moment before his eyes widen to the size of the porcelain crucibles they used in Lischak's class. "Wait, I just saw you in the den, like, twenty seconds ago, and you were sleeping."

"You were watching me sleep?" Grace says, smacking him in the shoulder and trying her damn best not to smile. "What is wrong with you, freak?"

"That's not the point. The point is," a combination of grogginess and bafflement leaves him grasping for words, "I don't know what the point is --- Grace, your hair is _red_. Why is your hair red?" He reaches out to touch it. "How did you get past me and out the door?"

"I think you should sit down for this."

Grace pulls him back into the den, and like a spectator with awesome seats at Wimbledon, Luke looks back and forth between Grace and her sleeping self. "This is not possible," he says. For a minute Grace thinks he may have a stroke, but the moment passes, and she begins to explain.

She tells him about the disease and chromosome 17, about that Henry guy who started the movement in the first place. CDP Awareness, or whatever the hell they call it. Grace isn't sure --- she removes herself from it, refusing to be poked and prodded with needles. There's no guarantee for a cure, and like hell she is letting any government agencies get a hold of her DNA.

Luke's shaking his head as she finishes. "I can't believe this. I just can't," he says, and Grace decides to wait before bursting his blissful string theory bubble and introducing him to the slap in the face known as determinism. "I'm dreaming. I think I'm dreaming. I'm having one of those lucid dreams where I know I'm dreaming and this is hurting my head. Am I, am I dreaming?"

Grace grabs his wrists and pushes him against the back of the plushy armchair, kissing him hard. When she lets go, he spends ten seconds dazed and staring straight at her. "Okay," he says breathily, " _not_ dreaming."

"That's right. Now, tell me about it tomorrow," Grace says, and then she's back in her room again, no longer a high school student suffering under oppressive totalitarian rule, but a college student suffering under oppressive totalitarian rule.

Someone is knocking violently at the door, and she snarls at whoever it is to wait a goddamn second while she scrambles to put on the pajamas she was wearing earlier. It's Luke, and he's looking much like he did earlier this evening. Earlier _Grace's_ evening, anyway, because for Luke, it has been a good two, three years since he learned about time traveling.

"Where were you?" he asks. "I called you about ten times in the last twenty minutes; you were supposed to come over to borrow my printer."

"I was _with_ you. About thirty seconds ago, actually. I'm getting kind of sick of you, Girardi."

It takes a moment before the confusion lifts, but it does and the memory comes back. Luke grins, and Grace pushes his glasses up the bridge of his nose.

"Did you have fun?" he asks. "You know, scaring the crap out of me, and then ruining every time-related physics theory I'd ever believed in?"

"It gets old, you know," she says. Luke gives her a look that says he doesn't quite believe her, and Grace wonders if he would believe it, if she told him that coming back to someone who's waiting is better than the actual time traveling itself.

 

 

 

**TWO  
** **Grace is 15, and 16**

****

The class schedule comes in the mail, and you scowl when you see that you've been placed in AP Chem. It's not that you will fail or anything --- okay, you just might, but it won't be because you don't know how to do the work --- it's that Lischak is the one teacher at AHS who actually enjoys what she's teaching, and you don't know if you can handle someone singing an Ode to Electrons at nine in the morning.

Sure, AP students make for excellent target practice when shooting rubber bands, and you get to play with Bunsen burners, but that's about all that is tolerable about AP Chem.

You go into the kitchen for a glass of juice, and you see your self sitting at the table, pouring herself the last of the Tropicana. "You know, you could have asked," you say, and your self rolls her eyes.

"When are you coming from?" you ask.

"Twenty-first of May. Next year." You self looks different. The hair is the same and she's wearing your leather jacket, but she looks _happy_. Happy like you haven't been since before Mrs. Rove died, which feels like a whole lifetime ago.

"You look disturbingly chipper," you scrutinize. "Does Price get the crap kicked out of him sometime within the next nine months? Oh, wait, you can't tell me."

Your self shrugs. "I didn't make the rules. Don't blame me if they suck." She takes a long swig of juice and offers you the rest.

"Don't drop Chemistry," your self says. It's more of a warning than a command. Possibly both.

"Are you telling me _not_ to drop Chemistry, or are you telling me that I _won't_ drop Chemistry?" Determinism? Sucks.

"Don't drop Chemistry," your self reiterates before she vanishes.

So you don't drop AP Chem.

At first you are tempted to see if you could screw up the universe, but then you remember the way your self looked, and you want that. You really do, despite all your _don't give a shit about anything in the world_ philosophy on life. And you've seen your self, so you know you will somehow live through this.

Even if you have to sit beside that loud girl with the scarves.

Even if that annoying blond geek in front of you keeps looking back at you, even when you aren't throwing spitballs at his head.

 

 

 

**THREE  
** **Grace is 18, and 25**

****

Two weeks before graduation, Grace is pulled out of her present, and as she picks herself up from Joan's bedroom floor, she wonders how this would look on an excuse slip. _Grace could not attend class today as she was stranded in the past. Please excuse her absence._

She starts to panic when she realizes that this is the bedroom in Joan's house, but it is not _Joan's_ room. The posters, the overstuffed closet, the stray books and CDs littered all over the floor like landmines waiting for you to stub your toe on --- they are missing. The room is cold and the bed is neatly made, and there's a bowl of flowers where Joan usually keeps her ever-widening collection of makeup.

_Shit_ , Grace thinks, _I've gone so far back that Joan hasn't even moved in yet._

Nevertheless she searches the closet for clothes and locates a pair of jeans and a turtleneck that fits. She has one foot on the roof when the door opens, and thank God, it's Luke standing there, looking impossibly older and even taller. Grace estimates that he is in his mid-twenties, which means she's gone to the future. And in the future, Luke looks _good_.

"Grace," he says, and there's something about the surprise in his voice that unsettles her. It's as if he hasn't seen her in a long time. Grace notices the sudden bareness of Joan's room, or not-Joan's room, and she knows that something is very, very wrong.

Luke takes her hand and helps her back inside. "God, you look so young," he says. "Not that you look old now. I so didn't mean that. You're not old, just older, you know --- um, when are you coming from?"

"2006. I was in the middle of P.E. with your sister." Grace puts her hands against his face and he stiffens. She feels a shiver down the back of her neck and she wishes that she can go back, back to Coach Keady's torture chamber. She prays to God or her screwed up genes or whatever's in charge of her extrachronological adventures to take her back.

Luke's smile is painfully forced. "You're in South Africa right now. The other you, I mean. A vast improvement compared to the gymnasium of Arcadia High."

"And we haven't talked in a while."

"Grace ---"

"Don't lie to me, Girardi. We haven't talked in a long time, have we?" Luke looks as though he will crumple if Grace says anything else, but she can't help herself, so she asks, "And where is your sister, by the way? What's with her room?"

"She's dead," he says, his voice like sandpaper. "I didn't know you were going to come, you never told me you were coming --- she's dead, Grace. Joan's dead."

An hour later, Grace is back in the changing room of AHS. Her head spins from the joyride through time, and she leans her head against a locker. There's a ringing in her ears, but she isn't sure if it's from the time traveling or the boiler room next door (the people who designed this school? Fucking architectural geniuses!) She can hear Coach Keady's whistle and the slap of sneakers against scuffed wood floors.

Her chest hurts. Her head hurts. Everything hurts.

Somehow she manages to get up and start putting on her gym clothes. Her fingers tremble as she ties her shoelaces, and she almost elbows Joan in the nose when she slaps Grace on her shoulder.

"Gotcha!" Joan squeals in delight. "Can't believe you finally fell for it. Hey, class is almost over. Where the hell were you? Coach Keady was this close to sending out the bloodhounds."

"Take a breath, Girardi," Grace snaps. She wants to hold Joan still, or just hold her, period. Tell her to check herself into the hospital, get herself a neurologist, go for a head CT or MRI or whatever. Find the aneurysm in her brain, catch it before she dies of a stroke at the age of twenty-five. ("The aneurysm might have caused those hallucinations she had," Luke told Grace. "She kept having them, even after the Lyme disease.")

But the words won't be able to come out, even if Grace tries to say them. Because it has already happened, and the future is really the past, and there's nothing anybody can do about it. The strain of trying to keep from crying is so great that the place between Grace's eyes starts to ache. Joan notices and in perfect Joan-fashion, she asks, "Are you all right?"

"Leave me alone," Grace says, even though what really wants to say is _don't go_. But she can't, just like she knows something she shouldn't, and she can't un-know it now. She's not all right, even though Joan is right before her, illuminated by the immortal light of fluorescent lamps, and Grace is not sure if she will ever be all right again.

 

 

 

**FOUR  
** **Grace is 24**

****

Luke doesn't break up with her because she loses the baby; he breaks up with her because it takes her two weeks to tell him. To be honest, she doesn't even really tell him --- he discovers the bottle of prenatal vitamins in the bowels of their medicine cabinet and ambushes her when she comes home from class. What is there to say? "I was pregnant, and now I'm not."

Grace didn't mean to keep it a secret. It happened so fast that she could barely register what was going on: woke up one morning and realized she was three weeks late, took a home pregnancy test, refused to believe results of pregnancy test, took another one, wasn't thrilled with the results either, went to a clinic where after even more tests, the doctor congratulated her on being unmarried, unemployed, and pregnant. "Mazel tov!" said the good doctor as he handed her the vitamins. Four hours later she started to bleed.

There's an ugly part of her that was, and still is, relieved.

Grace doesn't want a baby. Not now.

Sometimes she thinks she doesn't want a baby, ever, what with her screwed up DNA and low tolerance for people without teeth. With alcoholism AND involuntary time-traveling on her side, not to mention schizophrenia on Luke's ("So not funny," Joan sniffs), their future progeny would be too fucked up to even think about.

Henry and his wife had trouble having a baby. Grace has read about it, and so has Luke, but the thing with Luke is that he _hopes_. Grace doesn't want to be the one to destroy that, which is why she didn't tell him, but it doesn't matter anyway because she destroys him just the same when he finds out.

"I was trying to protect you," Grace wants to yell, but she doesn't. Instead she almost finds herself quoting _Our Bodies, Ourselves_ (and damn, she swore she'd never do that) and mumbles something along the lines of, "It was my business, okay?"

He leaves. He comes back the next morning, but they start talking less and less until the day they both know it's over. Luke moves out and in with Friedman. Grace makes plans with him to have dinner a week later but it's too soon, so Joan comes over instead, dragging with her a sleeping bag, half her wardrobe, and a series of postmodern Canadian indie films.

"Luke's my brother," she says, "but you're my best friend." And Grace gives whichever miserable dickhead is in charge of the universe the finger, because she knows Joan won't live to see her twenty-sixth birthday.

Grace wants to consider herself lucky. She knows how much time she has left with Joan, but it's hard when Joan's just being herself, irritating as fuck but so unapologetically herself. If Grace still believed in God, she could understand why the Big Guy wanted Joan back. She could understand, but it's still hard.

Grace travels more often now, after the break up. She tells herself it's because of the stress, as well as her messed-up hormones due to the non-pregnancy. She pretends that it's not an escape, even after the time she sees Luke with some redhead holding hands in the supermarket and she ends up in Chicago in 2000 and smacks sixth-grader Luke upside the head.

Mostly, she goes back to the past and sees her self at three, at twelve, at sixteen. She teaches her self how to skateboard, watches the zombie musical from the sound room of the auditorium, sees her self with her mother when Sarah was still her mother and not the other way around, sees her self with Adam, with Joan, with Luke.

It's always disappointing to return to the present, and she starts sleeping on the couch because her bed is too big. Joan goes back to Arcadia to take over Skylight Books for Sammy, and after a couple of seven-and-sevens, Grace comes close to telling her not to leave. _I'll never see you again_ , she almost says, but instead she gets out a bottle of tequila and ends up, later that night, puking up her insides while her self from next Friday holds back her hair.

Grace doesn't get pulled in the future, which is a good thing, because from what she knows of it she isn't even sure she wants to live it. She's afraid that she will see her self five years from now, having turned into her mother. She's afraid she will see her self in ten years, holding the keys to an SUV in one hand and a breast pump in another. She's afraid that she will see her self in the future, alone.

She already knows that Joan will not be in her future. She does not want to consider the possibility that she won't have Luke either.

 

 

 

**FIVE  
** **Grace is 5, and 29**

****

I can stay home today because I am sick, but I can't go outside and play and Adam can't come over and I can't watch cartoons because I NEED REST even though I'm not tired, so being sick is really not fun at all. I'd rather go to school because we are learning how to spell with the letter M, and Adam and I can work on our fort at recess. But no, I've got to stay home and my mom says I have to take a nap. I say, _I don't need a nap, I'm not a baby_ , and she says, _You're sick, sweetie, you won't get better unless you get some rest_ , and I say, _I don't want rest, I want soup_ , and my mother says, _You can have soup after you wake up._

My mom tucks me in bed and reads me THE LORAX even though I know all the words, but I'm not tired and I can't sleep, and my mom says, _Close your eyes and count to thirty-three._ So I close my eyes and count to thirty-three, and when I open my eyes I'm not in my room anymore. I'm in someone else's room, and there's light coming from the window, and the floor is wood the color of butter, and when I walk it squeaks squeaks squeaks.

Somebody calls, _Grace_? And so I squeak squeak squeak out of the room and down the stairs and at the bottom there is a man I've never seen before. I ask him, _Who are you and what are you doing in my house?_ And he says, _Actually, this is my house_ , and so I say, _Then what am **I** doing in **your** house?_ He laughs and says, _I think you are here for a surprise visit. My name is Luke and, well, this sounds creepy, but I'm your friend._

I say, _You are not my friend. You are a STRANGER and I'm going to call the police,_ and he says, _No, no, I'm not a stranger. Believe me. I know all about you. Your name is Grace. You live in Arcadia with your parents. Your father's a rabbi and your best friend is called Adam Rove. And you're . . . five?_

_AND A HALF_ , I say, and he nods. _And a half._

It's cold and I sneeze and Luke says, _Let's get you something to wear first, before you catch a cold_ , and I tell him, _I already have a cold._ I follow him into a room with a washing machine and a drying machine. He finds me a sweatshirt and I put it on. It's so big it touches my toes. It says _mit_ , and I ask, _What's mit?_ _MIT_ , Luke says. _It's my school. You're too old to go to school_ , I say, and he says, _I am not old_ , and I tell him, _Yes, you are_. _You are almost a dinosaur._ He says, _If I'm a dinosaur, what are you?_ and I say, _A pirate._

My stomach rumbles and Luke says, _You must be a very hungry pirate._ _I wonder if I have any pirate food in my house._ He holds out his hand and I take it, and we walk into the kitchen where he sits me on the counter and I watch as he looks for food. _Do you want eggs?_ he asks. _Leftover Chinese food? Coffee?_ I make an ewwww face and say, _Pirates do not eat eggs or Chinese food or coffee. Pirates eat peanut butter sandwiches,_ and he says, _Of course. Peanut butter and banana sandwiches. That's your favorite, right?_

Luke makes me a peanut butter and banana sandwich with the crusts cut off, and then he gets himself some boring cereal, the kind with no toy inside the box, and he pours a cup of coffee and asks me if I want some. _NO_ , I shout, and he says, _In that case, I'll see if I have enough half-and-half._ He comes back with a glass of milk and a bottle of Quik, and he says, _You can put in as much as you like._

We sit down and eat breakfast and we talk about stuff. Luke asks me if I have a boyfriend, and I sigh because I get asked this stupid grownup question about six times a week. I tell him, _No, boys are really stupid except for Adam_. Luke says, _I'm sure you will learn to appreciate them in the future_ , and I ask, _Do you have a girlfriend?_ and he smiles big and says, _No. I'm married._

_What is her name?_ I ask, and he says, _Her name is Grace, too_ , and I say, _Cool. Do you have kids?_ His face is sad all of a sudden and he looks down at his hands. _No, no kids_. _Too bad,_ I say, and he agrees, _Too bad_. He thinks for a minute and says, _You know what would make things better? Ice cream._

I am helping Luke make a chocolate ice cream mountain when a voice says, _Ice cream for breakfast? What are you trying to do, Girardi, give me cavities?_ I look up and there's somebody behind us, she has blonde hair and blue eyes and she's me, she's me, all growed up.

_You called me old,_ Luke says. _I was a little hurt. And apparently, you find boys to be stupid._ Grace says, _They ARE stupid_ , and Luke gives her a hard look but then he smiles and she smiles and I'm tired, so tired, and Luke picks me up, and I put my head against his neck. I close my eyes, and when I open them I am home again.

I run downstairs to find my mother and I tell her, _Mommy, guess what? I met Luke and he's a dinosaur and I'm a pirate and we had ice cream for breakfast and then I saw myself all growed up._ My mom kisses me and says, _Gracie, Gracie, you were dreaming, honey. It wasn't real, it was just a dream._

****

****

****

**SIX  
** **Grace is 13, and 32**

****

Kevin's baby is due two weeks before Christmas, and Grace receives the invitation to a baby shower in mid-November. "Happy birthday, Uncle Luke," she says, tossing the card at him as he comes out of the shower.

He wipes his fingers on his boxers before opening it. "Wow, Mom actually issued a subpoena. As future uncle and aunt, our attendance is required, as well as . . . do I really want to know what an Exosaucer is?"

"Do you think we could skip?" Grace tallies up the number of times they've gone back to Arcadia since Joan died. Kevin's accident had brought the Girardis together, but Joan's death slowly tore them apart. Their most recent excursion back to Arcadia took place last year, when they went back for the restaurant opening. Birthdays, anniversaries, holidays that involve the liberal use of fireworks --- these are taken on a case by case basis, but nothing is allowed to come between Italians and their food.

Luke scratches his ears with his towel. "I don't know. I think Mom really wants us to go back. It's been a really long time, and, well, maybe things will get better." He has a point: Helen, too, deserves a new beginning. "We don't have to go if you don't want to. I know pregnant women freak you out ---"

"Pregnant women do not freak me out. Pregnant women freak _you_ out. What freaks me out is that everybody seems to think that we aren't having sex the right way, since we've been married forever and still haven't gone forth and multiplied. And then they start talking about fertility issues, and honestly, I so did not need to know about your second-aunt Mona's incompetent cervix. Your relatives have some serious boundary issues."

Luke snorts and says, "I think they're just jealous that we're having sex at all. Half of them haven't slept in the same bedroom for years." He wraps his hand around Grace's arm and strokes the inside of her elbow. "How about we leave the second anybody starts talking about their reproductive history?"

"I am not shopping at Baby Gap," Grace says, and pulls him in for a kiss.

In the end, she finds herself in the infant department at Nordstorm's, staring at numerous metal-and-plastic contraptions that resemble the devices she has seen displayed in the Tower of London. The Exosaucer is ridiculously overpriced, so the newest Girardi is going to have to live with something less expensive. The salesperson, in a startling moment of common sense, recommends some sturdy cotton rompers that will withstand vomit and washing machines, and Grace figures, why the hell not?

Grace soon realizes that everything is either blue or pink, and both colors are making her eyes burn. She whips out her cell phone to text message Luke. BABY CLOTHES ARE SO SEXIST. WHY MUST GIRLS WEAR PINK? BLACK IS A PERFECTLY APPROPRIATE COLOR.

Luke texts back five minutes later. YOU KNOW, UNTIL MID-TWENTIETH CENTURY, BOYS WORE PINK AND GIRLS WORE BLUE. PEOPLE BELIEVED PINK, A PALER SHADE OF RED, WAS TOO MASCULINE FOR GIRLS.

Grace writes, WHY DO YOU KNOW THIS? YOU ARE SUCH A DORK, which is an understatement, if anything. She is about to send the message when the familiar headache strikes again, and she feels herself starting to seize. She hopes the salesperson's medical insurance will cover her therapy bills.

When she comes to, she's lying on the grass behind Arcadia Public Library. It's a clear night out, and there's a hint of autumn in the air. By some stroke of luck or goodwill of a higher being, nobody is around to arrest Grace for indecent exposure, and after fishing a quarter out of the water fountain, she makes a dash for a payphone and calls home.

Her self picks up, and her voice is so young that Grace is taken back. "Hello?"

"Hey, it's me," Grace says. "I'm behind the library. Bring clothes." She contemplates her request for a minute and winces, clarifying, "Bring Mom's clothes."

She hides behind a tall oak tree until her self arrives on her skateboard, bulging pack on her back. As Grace dons a hideous pantsuit of her mother's, she notes wryly that there's nothing like seeing yourself at thirteen to make you feel ancient. "Honestly, couldn't you have brought something better?" she asks, and her self glares at her.

"Mom and Dad are out for dinner, and Adam was over for the first time in, like, six months. I had to kick him out so I could save your ass. The least you can do is show a little appreciation."

"Fine. Thank you so much for bringing me these clothes which were made in Sri Lanka by nine-year-olds working for two cents an hour. What's the date today?"

"October 18, 2000."

In three weeks, Elizabeth Rove will kill herself.

"What?" asks Grace's self.

"What?"

"You looked like you were about to have a heart attack."

"Well, I've met my self at sixty-eight, so we can rule that out for now." That is a lie, but Grace tells it convincingly, and at thirteen, before Luke and Joan, with Adam as her sole ally, her self is desperate to find someone she can trust. 

Her self studies her. She looks hopeful at first, then dubious. "How old are you anyway?"

"Thirty-two. Thanks for reminding me."

They walk in silence for another two blocks, and just as they are about to jaywalk across Euclid, where the Girardis will move in three years from now, Grace's self turns to Grace and asks, "Does it get better?"

"Does what get better?"

"I don't know. Mom. School. Everything."

Her self looks small and washed-out in the watery light of the streetlamps, and though Grace has never been one for self-pity, she suddenly feels an aching tenderness towards this girl, who is so swallowed up by her loneliness, who has no idea at all what is waiting for her. No clue about Luke and Joan and Adam, and Luke, mostly Luke. Always Luke. This is her self, herself before her world opened up and divided itself into two existences: pre-Girardi and post-Girardi.

But this is not her now, not anymore.

Grace touches her self on the shoulder and says, "You gotta live it yourself, kid."

"A lot of help that is," her self snaps, and Grace sees that flash of familiar anger in her eyes. Grace's self shakes Grace's hand off, and they are silent again, until they reach their house.

"And here we are," says her self.

"Go ahead. I'm just going to hang here for a while."

"Whatever."

Grace watches as her self ambles toward the front door. In her present, the house has been sold years ago, after her mother's death. Another family lives there now, wallpapering over her family's sadness with their own. Everything seems familiar, yet it is not, and Grace feels like a stranger, a living person in a world of ghosts.

"Hey, you," Grace hollers to her self. "Life sucks, but you're going to be okay."

"You're not supposed to tell me that," her self hollers back, but she looks appreciative, as if she can almost believe it, and a second later Grace is gone, gone forward, gone back to where and when she belongs.

****

****

****


End file.
